Internet Addresses Are Running Out

The world is running out of Internet addresses — possibly as soon as next summer there will be none left, and then we have a problem, says the head of the European authority that assigns them.

Axel Pawlik is the Managing Director of RIPE NCC. Its main function, their website says, is “to act as the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) providing global Internet resources and related services to members in the RIPE NCC service region. The membership consists mainly of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecommunication organisations and large corporations located in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.”

RIPE NCC is one of five such Regional Internet Registries around the world.

We are talking about IP (internet protocol) addresses (like 205.203.140.65), not the named addresses (like europe.wsj.com). To be specific, we are talking about IP version 4 (known as IPv4) addresses.

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